After a two-year battle that has killed more than 5,000 people, Mexico's most powerful kingpin now controls the coveted trafficking routes through Ciudad Juarez. That conclusion by U.S. intelligence adds to evidence that Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's Sinaloa cartel is winning Mexico's drug war.It may be too much to hope that this will reduce the violence. Stratfor suggested this week that the recent killing of 3 Americans including an El Paso Sheriff's deputy were a last-ditch effort on the part of Sinaloa's rivals to draw the United States into Juarez to attack Guzman's forces and, from their perspective, balance the playing field.The assessment was made based on information from confidential informants with direct ties to Mexican drug gangs and other intelligence, said a U.S. federal agent who sometimes works undercover, insisting on anonymity because of his role in ongoing drug investigations.
The agent told The Associated Press those sources have led U.S. authorities to believe that the Sinaloa cartel has edged out the rival Juarez gang for control over trafficking routes through Ciudad Juarez, ground zero in the drug war.
Other officials corroborated pieces of the assessment. ...
Already, the Sinaloa cartel is the world's largest, and Guzman last year made Forbes magazine's list of the world's top billionaires.
His cartel moved in on the city in 2008 in an attempt to wrest it from the Juarez cartel led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes. The fighting prompted Mexican President Felipe Calderon to send thousands of army troops to the city, but the fighting has killed more than 5,000 people, making Juarez one of the world's deadliest cities.
A Guzman victory may not immediately halt the gang warfare in Juarez's streets. But those gangs "are fighting over crumbs. They're fighting over the retail sales in Juarez," Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferriz told the AP
Friday, April 09, 2010
El Ganador: AP calls La Batalla de Ciudad Juarez for the Sinaloa Cartel
Remarkable, if true. According to AP:
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What is the meaning of the phrase -- "trafficking routes through Ciudad Juarez"?
I think it is a garbage term created by government, and gladly repeated by newspapers and teevee "reporters" who are missing the point. It is a catch-all, Orwellian phrase designed to influence the public to think what the DEA, et al, want us to think about the drug import business.
Think about it: "trafficking routes through Juarez." It conjures up images of trucks, cars, vans, etc., stealthily entering Juarez by night, the drivers searching warily for one of those hard-to-find warehouses or safe-houses on back-streets which are located on the "trafficking routes through Juarez."
Well, bullshit.
Maybe vehicles cannot enter Juarez from the south or west or southeast without being stopped and searched by Mexican Army or Police, but I doubt it. But if they are, then the term "trafficking routes" means more than just street names and addresses for warehouses. It means a route through the Army and Civilian police and security agency bureaucracies. It means the cartels have been fighting and killing over who gets to pay the bribes.
It is almost a sure bet that those who are getting bribed don't care who pays it, as long as it is paid and it is large. I suspect that the Mexican government doesn't really give a damn if the cartels transport drugs through Juarez into the U.S.; they just want the killing stopped.
Ok, so the cartels pay the bribes to get the shit into Juarez. But there is still that damned Great River and all those Americano and Texican police and border patrol. What the hell? How do the importers get by those guys and onto IH 10 and IH 35?
Well, duh!! The bribes are paid to get through there, also, and are just another facet of the "trafficking routes through Juarez," stupid!
The AP, and the brains at Stratfor, need to stop accepting without question the propaganda being fed them by DEA, et al. They need to accept as a working hypothesis that Americans are being bribed big time, and start working on that story.
Damn, Doran. Very interesting.
Or they could legalize and tax marijuana and decriminalize small amounts of other controlled substances and put an end to this violence and over jailing.
Taxing and regulating is already being done with prescription drugs. Yet their abuse is more widespread than prohibited substances. And 60% is being diverted to the streets. There is no sexy aspect to diversion investigations and therefore no media attention.
Hoof, perhaps sentiments similar to these are at play regarding the relative tolerance of diverted prescription drugs - indeed, that fellow would argue it's justified.
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